AoS Game against Death 1500 points

[Huanata'Kor]

Hi Guys,

As the title states I have a game coming up against Death, later this evening and tomorrow against my mate. I believe he'll have the new book for this evening as we are good friends with our store manager and he knows we are playing a game this evening.

I have a rough idea of what he'll be taking as I know what he's been buying and painting, its roughly as follows:

Arkhan
Wight King with banner
30 skeles
15 black knights
10 grave guard
Mortis Engine

what sort of list would you run against this? This would be in an ideal setting where I had every model available to me and I'll base my list around the suggestions.

Thank in advance

 

[Crowsfoot]

Arkhan and the Mortis engine will cause you no end of problems, if Arkhan is left alone he will destroy you, I would try and snipe the wight king and Arkhan asap depending on your game type

Get the wight king down first so the skelly's lose there buffs, he is slower than you so use a fast list and maybe a guaranteed unbind to combat Arkhan and the engine.

 

[Aginor]

I would try and run a list that is shooting heavy, preferably with rend as well.
Double-Basti Thunderquake with Razordons or so.
Arkhan's spells could be countered using a Slann.

Hmmmm in 1500 that's not easy....
A Shadowstrike to kill Arkhan as quickly as possible could work, too.

About his army:
Arkhan got a lot better. He now has better spells to choose from.
There is no Wight King with banner anymore so I guess it is just a regular Wight King.
Try to block his Gravesites if you can (by standing right on top of them), that will at least prevent him from deepstriking with units behind you.
With the new regeneration mechanic you will also want to keep enemy units away from the Gravesites the prevent them from regenerating 6d3 models per round and similar shenanigans.

Also be careful, depending on the spells and traits he chooses Skeletons can now be surprisingly fast.

And the most important thing: Don't be sad if you lose, because with Death being new and more powerful now it isn't unlikely.

 

[Crowsfoot]

I would try and run a list that is shooting heavy, preferably with rend as well.
Double-Basti Thunderquake with Razordons or so.
Arkhan's spells could be countered using a Slann.

Hmmmm in 1500 that's not easy....
A Shadowstrike to kill Arkhan as quickly as possible could work, too.

About his army:
Arkhan got a lot better. He now has better spells to choose from.
There is no Wight King with banner anymore so I guess it is just a regular Wight King.
Try to block his Gravesites if you can (by standing right on top of them), that will at least prevent him from deepstriking with units behind you.
With the new regeneration mechanic you will also want to keep enemy units away from the Gravesites the prevent them from regenerating 6d3 models per round and similar shenanigans.

Also be careful, depending on the spells and traits he chooses Skeletons can now be surprisingly fast.

And the most important thing: Don't be sad if you lose, because with Death being new and more powerful now it isn't unlikely.

Interesting what the new rules are bringing.

 

[Aginor]

I have caught only a glimpse but yeah, they look good. All the Legions get some nifty stuff, like spells and traits and artefacts.
And the new units along with the changes to the existing ones also provide interesting new tactical variants.

 

[Huanata'Kor]

Yes I've seen some of the new Death rules as I'm on the FB group. I was thinking of taking light of dracothion as an artefact to guarantee that unbind if Arkhan gets off his signature spell that can effectively auto delete if he gets decent rolls.

Would you take the double teleport for the slann to get units in range to try and snipe Arkhan from the get go?

I didn't know whether to try and take mortal wounding units such as Kroak and maybe terradons to try and get lucky with mortal wounds on him also or do you think that's less viable?

 

[Aginor]

With a tiny bit of luck mortal wounds should work. They can save mortal wounds on a 6+ but that's a risk you have to take .

 

[Huanata'Kor]

So last night I played against my mates death army and I won a major victory. I realised with the suggestions given I couldn't take some of the units as I don't have some of the models yet and Kroak was a bit too expensive for this game I thought so I just ran my standard Slann.

He got first turn but to be honest made a big mistake and left himself/Arkhan exposed, I did get quite lucky with my dice rolls and my buffed up carnosaur teleported to within 9 of Arkhan and then made the charge. Due to my skink starpriest having given him double damage on his bite, I somehow managed to hit with both clawed forelimbs, which meant all my bite attacks hit and I rolled four 6's to wound resulting in his bite doing a total of 20 wounds (due to doubling the damage of each d3)!!!! Arkhan snuffed it.

That put him on the backburner straight away, he then charged my Eternal Starhost with a unit of 30 skeles, again whiffed his rolls and I smacked back and all but wiped the unit, which he then lost due to batleshock.

We were playing the game where you have to control both objectives by the end of turn 3 to win a major victory, so all that essentially happened then was my eternal starhost stayed put on my objective, I'd wiped Arkhan off of his so he couldn't do his summoning through the gravesite, that he had positioned Arkhan there for, so I teleported a unit of skink skirmishers onto his objective which won me the game!

In summary, pleased with my performance, however my friend had some horrendous rolls and being as he was using the new book made some pretty bad errors and didn't obviously know how to play his army to the best of its ability, which definitely would have made them much harder to beat.

Was good fun though

 

[Aginor]

So last night I played against my mates death army and I won a major victory. I realised with the suggestions given I couldn't take some of the units as I don't have some of the models yet and Kroak was a bit too expensive for this game I thought so I just ran my standard Slann.

He got first turn but to be honest made a big mistake and left himself/Arkhan exposed, I did get quite lucky with my dice rolls and my buffed up carnosaur teleported to within 9 of Arkhan and then made the charge. Due to my skink starpriest having given him double damage on his bite, I somehow managed to hit with both clawed forelimbs, which meant all my bite attacks hit and I rolled four 6's to wound resulting in his bite doing a total of 20 wounds (due to doubling the damage of each d3)!!!! Arkhan snuffed it.

That put him on the backburner straight away, he then charged my Eternal Starhost with a unit of 30 skeles, again whiffed his rolls and I smacked back and all but wiped the unit, which he then lost due to batleshock.

We were playing the game where you have to control both objectives by the end of turn 3 to win a major victory, so all that essentially happened then was my eternal starhost stayed put on my objective, I'd wiped Arkhan off of his so he couldn't do his summoning through the gravesite, that he had positioned Arkhan there for, so I teleported a unit of skink skirmishers onto his objective which won me the game!

In summary, pleased with my performance, however my friend had some horrendous rolls and being as he was using the new book made some pretty bad errors and didn't obviously know how to play his army to the best of its ability, which definitely would have made them much harder to beat.

Was good fun though

Good job!
Seems like he suffered from the new army syndrome.
Without magic support there is not much that can kill an Eternal Starhost, so you did it exactly right.

 

[Wazz]

Nice! I've been wondering with the changes to death how we would do. I feel like its a buff for us with the teleport and Shadowstrike fun we can really punish heroes out of position!

 

[Huanata'Kor]

He had a hard time dealing with my mobility and like Aginor advised I positioned my units so any summoning he tried to do through his gravesites could only be in certain areas so I was essentially positioning him where I wanted him. Like you said if death heroes ever get out of position we can definitely take advantage of that which massively restricts death regens.

 

[Wazz]

Awesome! I'm liking the indirect buffs we've been getting from other armies getting love lmao.